The IEEE Information Theory Society (ITSoc) is pleased to announce that Professor Shirin Saeedi Bidokhti has been named the 2022 Goldsmith Lecturer. The Goldsmith Lecturer Program was established with a generous gift by Dr. Andrea Goldsmith and is supported by several corporate sponsors (see Goldsmith Lecturer for full details). The award provides travel support for an outstanding early-career woman researcher to deliver a lecture at one of the ITSoc’s Schools of Information Theory, held for the benefit of students and post-doctoral researchers. By highlighting technical achievements of early career women, the ITSoc Goldsmith Lecturer Program helps the award recipients build their professional career and recognition. The Lectureship contributes to the public visibility of the researcher and helps increase the diversity of IEEE ITSoc and IEEE as a whole, as women are an under-represented group in both. The award recipient will also serve as a role model and inspiration to diverse students attending the Information Theory Schools.

Shirin Saeedi Bidokhti is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) with a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer and Information Systems. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer and Communication Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and her B.Sc degree from University of Tehran. Prior to joining UPenn, she was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University and the Technical University of Munich. She has also held short-term visiting positions at ETH Zurich, University of California at Los Angeles, and the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of information theory, networking, and learning. She is a recipient of the 2021 NSF-CAREER award, 2019 NSF-CRII Research Initiative award and the prospective researcher and advanced postdoctoral fellowships from the Swiss National Science Foundation.